


Teetering

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Angry Sex, Bondage, Breasts, Edging, F/M, Finger Sucking, Fingerfucking, Fucking, Handcuffs, Light Dom/sub, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Orgasm, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Orgasm Denial, Relationship(s), Restraints, Romance, Rough Sex, Sex, Subspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 09:50:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8707711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: Ice is melting . . . It's a lie. A taunt she tosses over her shoulder as she slips around the corner.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Overly long pr0n. Tag for 5 x 17, “Scared to Death”

 

“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control 

we believe we have is purely illusory, 

and that every moment we 

teeter on chaos and oblivion”

— Clive Barker

* * *

 

 

_Ice is melting . . ._

It's a lie. A taunt she tosses over her shoulder as she slips around the corner. Through the office and into the bedroom, at last. She sets the rocks glass at the edge of the night stand and quickly sheds her blouse in all its infinite buttons. She moves quickly for all the good it does. She's nearly down to lingerie, and he's still nowhere to be found. 

 _His loss,_ she tells herself as she tugs pin after pin from the bun at the nape of her neck and shakes her hair loose. She catches sight of herself in the mirror across the room. The expanse of her skin interrupted by perfectly fitted silver-grey lace. She bares her teeth in a feral smile. 

It _is_ his loss. The lingerie’s a matching set. High-end stuff that she looks _good_ in. It's not from him, and that's no accident. It's retaliation or something for this ridiculous stretch of days. This . . . performance of his. He's been a pain in the ass on this case, but that’s not exactly new. He's been a ridiculous child, with his holy water and his bucket list, but whatever this is goes well beyond that, though she couldn't say why or how far. 

She only knows that she's feeling a little mean, and the fact that he's dawdling isn't helping. The fact that he hasn't been hot on her heels is salt in whatever wound this is. She rises up on one foot, using the other to skim off her trouser sock. She bends at the waist, pondering the question. Peeling one foot bare, then the other, entertaining all the ways she might make him pay. 

She straightens up. She's just about to when he's behind her. Suddenly behind her and spinning her to face him. He's _cuffing_ her. One deft move, then another, and the silvery snick of cool metal circling each of her wrists.

"Castle!" She snaps. She yanks at the short chain between the bracelets—exactly the way she's seen a thousand and one perps and POIs do over the years— and hates herself for it. "What the hell?" 

She looks up from the cuffs. Looks at _him_ for the first time since the living room and nearly stumbles back. As it is, she blinks. She swallows hard and fights down the urge to babble. To plead, maybe, when she seeks the dark look on his face. The coiled, deceptively casual way he holds himself. 

"Ground rules," he says, pleasantly enough after a pause just long enough to be entirely _un_ pleasant. Entirely unsettling. 

"Ground rules?" 

She means to laugh it off. To meet this sudden coolness clipped syllable for clipped syllable, but he turns her by the shoulders, just then, and it comes out an uncertain waver. It ends on a soft, surprised catch of breath as he crowds into her body from behind, a heady meeting of the heat rolling off him and the chill that's already settled on her own skin. 

"Well past time we set some, I think." 

 _His_ words come readily enough. Smoothly. They're matter fact, even as he pops his knee into the back of hers and controls her belly-down fall to the bed. There's something surreal about it.  The reversal and the swift grace of his movements as he loops something around the chain of the cuffs. A belt. One of his that was absolutely not there a few nights ago. That has absolutely _never_ been there, though they’re no strangers to the kind of play that might call for such a thing.  

The implications of it—the fact that he's been _planning_ this—register low in her belly as he pulls the strap tight with a hiss that lashes her, hands overhead, firmly to the metal frame supporting the mattress.  

"We survived this time." 

He peels his body slowly up and off hers. He pushes up to his arms first—an experiment—and, for a moment, she’s too dazed to react. To take advantage of her comparative freedom of movement when his dark, honey-thick voice is trailing down her spine.

"Survive." 

The word uncoils within her. It breaks the spell of this peculiar passivity, and she strikes out. She flips from belly to back, but the motion twists the belt, drawing her wrists closer together. It pins her more tightly to the bed until she can work the slack around to her favor, and it’s too late by then. 

He has one ankle secured. He's working on the second, looping something wide and silky into the kind of knot that seems loose enough until she struggles. Until she pulls fiercely. One foot, then the other. Both together and her hands while he looms above her. Watches patiently until she quiets. Until she's panting up at him, waiting. 

"This time." 

He goes on as if she hasn't spoken. As if he hasn't just tied her down without warning, and it's the total lack of concern that sends all the heat in her body racing south. The low pitch of his voice and the utterly unhurried pace of his words that has her nipples tightening with anticipation. 

"Next time, though, we'll be prepared, won't we, Beckett?" 

He reaches for her. Splays his palm just above her skin as though he can't decide where to land it, then drags the fan of his fingers down the curve of her rib cage. He dips one fingertip beneath the lace band of her thong and traces the sweep of it low across her belly. 

"Next time, we'll behave." 

“Behave.” The idea draws a laugh from her. Or maybe it’s the maddening lightness of his touch. The way he lingers directly below her navel when he knows full well she's something like ticklish just. right. _there._ " _This_ is behaving?" 

"It's about to be," he says. His voice is steely. _Controlled._ The word pops into her head and sends another arrow of heat through her. His eyes roam over her, head to toe, like he can't quite decide where to start. "See . . . " 

He advances suddenly from the foot of the bed. Slithers on his elbows till he's perched right between her widespread thighs. She flinches. Tries to draw her knees together, but there's nothing like enough give in whatever he's bound her with. He flicks a dark smile up at her. He doesn’t bother to push back. Instead, he waits with exaggerated patience for her to give in, then drops a kiss to the soaking wet lace directly over her clit, like she's a good little girl. 

"It's not about sex." 

His tongue flicks out. It drags a lazy trail up over the same spot, pressing the roughness of the fabric into her and very nearly sending her through the roof. Very, _very_ nearly, but then he's gone. His wicked tongue is on to other things. Words she can barely make out through the haze of frustration. 

"It's about rules." 

"Rules." She says it between her teeth. Spits it at him as she bucks against her restraints.

"Don't sulk, Beckett." His palms land on her hips, one emphatic weight at a time stilling her as he pulls himself further up her body. "There's good news." He shifts lazily on to one thigh and strips off his shirt. He takes his time with it. Fussing with the cuffs and setting it carefully aside. 

" _Is_ there?" It's sarcastic. She manages that. Manages to trap the tip of her tongue before it darts out to lick her lips, and still it feels nothing like control. Nothing like giving as good as she gets. 

"No virgins here, for one thing," he says casually. He drops back on to his elbows and continues the climb. The friction of his bare skin on hers is an entirely new complication. An entirely new element that has her heart rate kicking up another notch.  "No . . . _defilement."_ He draws the hard length of his cock between her legs. Draws the word out and groans in time with her at the contact. It's. Good. _So_ good, even through too many layers of clothing. "So we're safe on that score."

His mouth hovers over hers. Her chin tips helplessly up, following, opening as his tongue darts and sweeps and teases and she has no idea at all what to focus on, and then he's _talking._ He's narrating, interrogating, _musing_ on horror movies. On who lives and who dies, and all the while his hands roam freely. His teeth nip and his hips roll and thrust as makes his languid way around and over her body. 

"I wonder about that, though," he says, and there's something breathless about it. Something earnest. He breaks character for less than a second and leaves her even more desperate. More of a greedy, helpless, _wanting_ mess when he drops right back into it. This sharp-tongued, ruthless version of himself that's rising up to meet every mean little impulse she's been wrestling with. To subdue every last one. 

His lips travel down her throat. His open mouth settles, hot and wet, between her breasts, right over her scar. It calls up another pulse of heat. The flush of something that might have been shame once upon a time, but it’s nothing like that now. Now—always, with him—it’s a fucking turn-on and he knows it. The flat of his tongue and the sweep of his lips over the pucker and discoloration. His fascination and unwavering adoration wind her up even further. They have her back arching and her fingers flexing helplessly overhead. 

"I wonder about innocent little Katie." He palms one breast, kneading and pinching, sucking at the skin and marking her. It's rough. Obscene juxtaposed to the diminutive of her name.  "I wonder where it happened." 

His tongue circles the tight peak of her nipple, working the texture of the lace against the sensitive skin until she's crying out, at the edge again, though it seems impossible, and then his hand is at her throat. His fingers are curving right around it.  Pressureless, but unmistakably _there_. Inarguably there, and her eyes go wide at the midnight flash of his as he nudges her jaw shut. As he presses one finger to her lips, and once she's quiet—once she's _chastened_ —he goes on like nothing happened. Like his thumb isn't lingering over her thumping pulse point and the scent of her arousal isn't thick in the air. 

"I wonder _how_ it happened. How it was,” he goes on, cool and casual again as one hand trails down her ribs. Over hip and belly to land once more between her legs. “Clumsy? Desperate? Awkward?” 

He cups his palm against her, _hard._ Too hard, and the genuine pain of it jolts her. Her eyes fly open, but somehow she catches herself. She knows the rules now, and even though the surface of her mind is screaming out to resist—to fight him for what her body _so_ badly wants—there's a deeper, positively _purring_ part of her that's exactly where she wants to be. Needs to be. Flat on her back and completely subject to his every whim, so she catches herself. She bites her lip just in time. Keeps silent and struggles against the urge to grind against him. To chase release. 

"Good." He takes her mouth roughly, but backs off the rest of her. He lets his talented fingers dip and circle and wander. He resumes his interrogation. "Was it good, Kate?" 

He presses minute kisses along her jaw. Dots a trail down the taut muscles of her neck as his free hand slides the bra strap from one shoulder. He suckles at her breast. Light, then forceful. Teeth leading, then tongue. He savors, drawing on it rhythmically for a long, toe-curlingly suggestive while, then switching lazily from one nipple to the other. Over the lace. Under, until she's dizzy with it. Until, flat on her back, she feels like she's falling, and his voice drifts up as he thumbs the fabric of her thong aside and slides a curling finger into her body. 

"Did you come that first time?" 

He adds a second finger and thrusts hard once. He closes his lips around her nipple. Brings his teeth to bear and pushes to the exquisite point of pain. He pushes her just beyond, then rolls suddenly away. Leaves her poised on the verge—leaves her absolutely fucking _deprived—_ a third time. Her head tips back. Her body is one line of tension and her mouth opens on a would-be howl, but his palm comes up again. 

It curves around her jaw and travels down her throat. A warning. A reminder. A _demand_ , but there's wild uncertainty beneath it all. In the tremor of his own body. The shallow tug of his breath and the sliver of blue just visible around the black of his pupils. There's a wordless plea in the reversal of everything they are, and  she can't help but answer. 

"No," she says, dry-mouthed and scarcely audible. She flashes her teeth at him. Acquiescence that's less than total, and the sudden, unbidden grind of his hips says he wouldn't have it any other way. "I didn't fucking come." 

"Sorry," he whispers, his kisses as lavish and tender as they were punishing seconds ago. "Sorry. Sorry." 

Warmth suffuses her. Heaviness settles into her limbs, and she feels like she's sinking into the mattress. Like the restraints are immaterial, given how remote a possibility movement is. How very unattractive a proposition anything but this seems. Submission to his will. The sheer pleasure of it shoots through her veins in delicious, slow-unfurling tendrils, but it's all twined around and around and around with urgent, all-encompassing desire. 

"Castle," she moans, long and loud into his mouth. 

“Mmmmmm.” He breaks the kiss. “I _am_ sorry for little Katie. Probably for the best, though.” He  laughs as it says it. _Laughs_ and every iota of resistance in her that's gone missing rises to the surface. She'd gladly kill him in that instant. Gladly take what she needs until he's a desiccated husk and _then_ kill him. 

But he drops a kiss on the end of her nose. He laughs again, like he knows exactly what she's thinking, and he's utterly unafraid. He laughs, and she's undone all over. She's fond and pliant and horny and so fucking _in love_ with him, even when he starts talking again. 

“See, I have thoughts," he says as his arms snake behind her. He manhandles her, rolling her body toward him, away from him, and then flat on her back. He ends with a flourish as he slides her bra up and out of the way. He leaves it pooled up around her wrists—an afterthought but for the fact that he buries his nose in the lace and flashes a heated, eye-brow waggling look her way before he comes over all serious again. "Orgasms"—he lets his hands play freely over her breasts, tugging, caressing, exploring—“That'll get you killed." 

"Oh _fuck_ that." 

The words ring off the ceiling. They rattle the metal bracelets at her wrists and ignite something in him. He's on her. Elbows framing her ribs, thighs set wide on either side of her hips. His pants are open, and she has literally no idea when that happened. When he shoved jeans and boxers far enough down to free his cock. She has literally no idea and could not care less as his body rises and falls over hers. As the hard length of him _drags_ along her slit, back to front to back again, gathering wet heat. 

"I would," he growls as his teeth land at the base of her throat. "God, Beckett." He collapses on to her. "You're not the only one suffering here." 

"So don't suffer," she pants. The warmth of his chest against her bare breasts and the sudden, erratic press of his hips has her in motion. Writhing beneath him. She has him. She's _sure_ she has him, but he silences the wild sound of triumph rising up and out of her. 

"Rules," he says with one last, savage kiss. "There are _rules._ That’s the point.” 

He drags his way south again. He sucks and laps greedily, then eases off. He works at her, driving her on and reining her in. He mutters filthy things and hums against her clit. He bites and brushes feather light kisses high up on the inside of her thighs. He reaches up and thumbs her nipples. Presses soaking fingers to her greedy lips and chuckles against the inside of her thigh when she sucks hard and still can't get enough. 

He exhausts every possibility for foreplay—for winding her up—and invents another and another and another until she's howling for him. Until her cries draw him all the way up her body again and she doesn't know whose tongue she's tasting herself on.

“Fuck me, Castle.” She pleads with him, hardly recognizing her own voice. “Please. Enough. Just . . . Fuck . . .” 

He shoves the lace of her thong to the side and slams into her without warning. Fully. Savagely, and it _hurts_ at first. She’s a slick, hot mess, but too many trips to the edge and back have left her brutally tight. 

“God. Beckett.”

He grits his teeth, drags his way nearly out of her, then pounds forward again, groaning, cursing. Punishing them both until they cross some line together. She fades out. Her eyes roll back in her head. Every thought pushes out to the edges of her mind, leaving it blissfully black and empty. She’s present/not present. She hears her own voice, a curious, detached thing, pleading with him. 

_More Harder Please Hurts More_

She feels outside of herself. Over. Above. Around. As if she can see the raw, frenetic picture they make. Her arms stretched high. Legs splayed obscenely. The flash of his teeth as he growls into her skin. The way he’s trembling, head to toe. Barely holding on until he isn’t, and she snaps back into herself just as he erupts in a roar. He drives forward to the hilt, hips jerking as she feels his scalding release deep inside her. It goes on forever and not long enough. 

He moves to free her the minute he can. He manages the belt. Tips his face up in surprise when her still-cuffed hands drop over his head and and his shoulders to weakly tug him close. 

“Stay.” Her voice is ragged, but it makes her smile faintly. It joins every twinge in her shoulders, hips, knees. Every tender, burning patch of skin his teeth and nails and tongue have left raw. It all comes together and washes away on a tide of closeness. Contentment and satisfaction. “Can’t split up. That’s a rule.” 

“A rule,” he repeats. He tries to shrink away. Buries his face against her ribs. “Paris.” 

“Paris.” Saying it is another kind of release. Another washing away. “But . . . me, too. Bracken.” 

She tugs at his shoulder blades, trying to pull him back up to face her. He sighs and nods, lingering just long enough to tug at the material circling each of her ankles. He holds them up with a flourish. Neckties. Solid amethyst, solid garnet. They’re two of her favorites, and it makes her heart bump a little painfully. The tenderness of the gesture paired with the sheer fury of all this. 

“Can’t split up.” He ducks unexpectedly, slipping down and out of the circle of her arms. He takes both her hands in both of his and lifts her red, chafed wrists to his lips. “That was . . .” His breath hitches. He tugs, making the chain jingle. “Kind of the plan.” 

He looks . . . not ashamed, exactly. He flicks a glance her way, and there’s enough darkness in it that she knows _ashamed_ isn’t even in the room, and she’s glad. She studies the cuffs. The pristine surface and the safety release she knows is there without looking, though their weight and the fact that they’re utterly unadorned is as deliberate a message as the careful choice of ties. As deliberate as everything about this. 

She torques her wrist to thumb the release just a fraction of a second after a sudden move to pull him back to her body. He topples on to her and she rolls with it. She pushes through the ache of her limbs to lay him out on his back. She doubles the bracelets and leans in close, holding them up in the narrow sliver of space between them. 

“Don’t need these. Not anymore. Promise.” 

“Promise,” he echoes.

She kisses him deeply. Tenderly, then turns on a dime. She moves swiftly to capture his wrists. To snag the free end of the belt still resting above his head. She strips his pants and boxers down his legs. She has him naked and well in hand  almost before his eyes can even fly open. Before his lips can form words, she’s on him. 

“Want,” she purrs in his ear. “Want is a different story.” 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Don’t know. I was trying to work on prompts, and this just . . . presented itself. I had had a thought a long while ago about this episode on the heels of Recoil, Target, and Hunt. I understand the show/network desire to mix it up, but I always wanted more of the two of them really dealing with the things that were fucked up between them. 


End file.
